Jake Reynolds
Co-Founder / CTO
Choosing a Brand
If youâve ever welcomed a child into the world, owned a pet, or launched a start up, you know the experience of trying to decide a name for them. You pitch anxious soft balls to your partner to test the waters, then you start throwing a few curveballs and gauging their reaction, and eventually hope to land on a home run (thatâs it for the baseball metaphors, sorry). Once you decide on a name, you feel awkward saying it the first few times, it feels like youâre forcing it a bit, and eventually it becomes second nature and you question why it ever felt weird in the first place. Remember when Google wasnât a verb? It was weird! But it grows on you. So I wanted to tell you a bit about how Tim and I landed on Wirespeed.
#đ Threati-what?
When Tim and I first re-connected, he already had a name picked out which came from an accidental combination of the words âthreatâ and âmitigationâ. Threatigator, the threat mitigator, was born in a random meeting many months before we met. I was sold on it: I loved the casual vibes, the fact we didnât have to start-up-erize it by removing vowels, and the .com was available.
We continued with Threatigator for about a month and initial impressions from friends and family was that it was cute. However, even though we loved it, feedback from investors and executives was that it wasnât professional enough. Itâs hard for a CISO to advocate to their board for a critical security tool with a funny name. One thing Iâve always loved about cyber is its embracing of counter culture and mixture of personalities, but sadly that doesnât extend outside of the security space. So we began searching for a more boardroom-friendly name.
Threatigator is dead, long live Threatigator.
#Mirror mirror on the wall, whatâs the coolest start up name of them all?
In the past Iâve used Namelix to try to come up with company names, it uses â¨AI⨠to generate brand names and logos. The names are 50/50, but the designs and branding it comes up with are pretty nifty. Tim and I spent an absurd amount of time sending each other ridiculous names trying to come up with some candidates.
And of course, we gave ChatGPT a shot:
#Some Quick Asides
#Sorry, Tim
I shoud say, one of Timâs first suggestions (he didnât even use AI for it!) was Wirespeed, but I wasnât completely sold on it, which is why we kept brainstorming.
#Not Sorry, Tim
However, before we decided on a name, the working name I used was Blart, named after everyoneâs favorite mall cop.
And Tim â rightfully so â wouldnât let us officially launch with that name, no matter how much I loved it. So I consider us even.
#Final Candidates
After a while, we were able to come up with five candidates and start polling our networks on them:
Tim came up with the 3D illusion idea for Focus Security. While I was mocking it up in Figma, after about 2 hours, it gave me a migraine staring at the out-of-focus text, which I found kind of amusing. I figured it would be very eye-catching and had visions of a future where people driving down the highway would see our billboards and try to figure out WTF was going on.
We wanted to have a variety of options, but I think secretly I wanted âFocus Security,â Tim wanted âWirespeed,â and the others were to remove bias. After my second migraine, I gave up on Focus (I now get nauseous thinking about looking at it).
We sent out the options to 15-20 people and every single response conflicted with the others. We both thought there would be a clear front runner, but alas. Eventually, we decided on Wirespeed (which I am in love with now) and started iterating on logo designs:
After trying out 40 different colors and removing âSecurity,â we settled on our final logo:
It felt like a marathon â over a month of sporadic work trying to identify our branding so we could go forward with our launch. It feels a little silly when you think about it, but itâs one of the most important decisions weâve made so far. And in the meantime, we were still iterating on the early product, and that iterative cycle helped us refine many parts of the product.
#Thanks, Tim
On a personal note, before reconnecting with Tim, I spent six months on my own trying the solo founder thing. I have to say, itâs quite a breath of fresh air to have a partner to bounce ideas off of, who questions my decisions, and who provides a collaborative environment to work in. Itâs been awesome working with you, Tim, and I look forward to many more discussions about the difference between violet and fuschia.
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